From my autonomous command post in the forest wilderness of North Queensland, I keep tabs on the rest of the world while resisting being sucked into its machinery. After great deliberation and soul-searching, the only conclusion I can come to is that the rest of the world is stark-staring barking mad. The only slight concern I have about this conclusion is that I seem to be outnumbered 7 billion to 1. This leads to a niggling doubt, but I shrug it off as one must have confidence in one’s opinions after all.
Don’t think for a moment dear reader that I consider each and every person totally demented, far from it, but the systems of toil and reward, saving and investment, seem so far from a rational or equitable system that I wonder how long you will tolerate it. The idea of fair reward for toil has totally broken down, to be replaced by reward depending on how close your snout is to the money trough. Since the GFC in the US 14 trillion dollars was created from nothing by the Fed. The cartel of banks answerable to nobody. So the loss of value of the dollar in the pocket was existing money minus $14,000,000,000,000. After all they didn’t create and goods or anything real, just money. So who got this tidy sum? Initially the banks, then they bought government debt to keep it solvent, and then to corporations where it flowed onto Wall Street. Does this strike you as a bit incestuous? You bet. Those inside the system with noses to the trough are sucking us dry. This explains why 20-25% of the GDP of the US and UK is in financial services. The new Mafia taking a cut on every deal. If you take a rational look at an efficient system to transact and account for financial deals, perhaps a 5% surcharge would be in order. And so it was in the England of Dickens with a starched collar clerk at a high desk. Now despite the enormous advantages of computerised systems, the financial sector is apparently 5 times less efficient than their quill scratching forebears? Or is it 5 times more bloated because they can?
No, in fact they are far more efficient than at any time in the past. The financial sector has just massively expanded its range of products by wrapping up debt and marketing it as an asset. The madness really starts with the ‘derivatives’. I promise to pay Joe $100. Joe can’t pay his debts so he sells my debt to Sue. Sue has bought a lot of debts at a bargain price, so auctions them off at a discount. And so it goes on until you get ‘derivatives’ where the original source has been just about forgotten, and somewhere along the line, the debts have been re-branded as assets. The derivatives market had reached about US$650 trillion! the last I heard. Something like a decades worth of the entire world’s economic output. And the financial world makes a fortune trading this shit! The whole lot of these useless parasites have never between them made anything as useful as a box of matches!
If I sound a tad strident, a little miffed, perhaps a bit out of sorts, then I am not quite getting my point across. I am absolutely livid that the greatest larceny in in the history of the world is going on, transferring the world’s assets and wealth from the people who create it to the 1% obscenely rich and we let it continue! One of the smartest purchases that the uber-rich have made in the last few decades has been governments. That has paid off handsomely. Now all politicians can gibber on about is GDP, promoting industry, the bottom line, and money, money and money. I would now like to point out that a society is composed of people, people and people.
I am fortunate to live in a wealthy country where the basic needs are easily met. If you don’t agree, then we have a different definition of ‘basic’. I have been to places like Africa to receive lessons on ‘basic’, and how happy you can be if you pass that threshold. In Australia, we can so easily deliver ‘basic’ to everyone and still have a huge surplus to play with to develop ourselves, our relationships and our society. I make the case that we don’t need more money, we need more time, more good relationships, more contact with the environment, more time to play with our kids.
Perhaps I am not outnumbered by 7 billion to one. There may be a few out there who feel they don’t actually need more money. Who see the pursuit of wealth beyond basic needs as folly. I’m feeling a bit lonely and I’d like to hear from you.
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